architect in England? But Taran went to a Canadian university and ended up working for a prestigious firm in Toronto. Owen worried about leaving the farm to his son and considered changing his will and leaving it to his eldest nephew instead. It mattered very much to him that his home should remain in his family. It seemed not to matter to Taran at all.
Daisy got out of the car and went to the front door. Before she had time to ring the bell, it opened and Taran appeared, looking down at her with an air of impatience. ‘I’ve got the puddings,’ she said with a smile, attempting to lift his mood.
‘Thanks,’ said Taran, taking them. A couple of spaniels and a black Labrador rushed past his legs and began barking at the car. ‘Bloody dogs!’ he exclaimed. ‘They’re driving me nuts! They want to go for a walk, but it’s too foggy. I can barely see beyond my own nose.’ He frowned at Daisy. ‘And you were okay driving up here?’
‘I just drove slowly,’ she said, watching the dogs sniffing her wheels and cocking their legs on the tyres. ‘And I’ll drive slowly back again.’ She smiled in a breezy way that aroused Taran’s curiosity. There was something about it that told him she wasn’t very interested in him.
‘I wouldn’t drive back if I were you,’ he said. ‘Not right now, anyway. The fog is really thickening and that lane is precarious, even when it’s clear.’
‘Really, I’m fine. I’ve driven in Italy for years, this is nothing.’ She made for the car.
Taran watched her go. ‘You know, I do remember you from school,’ he said, then chuckled. ‘Didn’t you have pigtails?’
Daisy turned round. ‘I’m sure I didn’t have pigtails.’
‘Or plaits. They could have been plaits.’
She laughed. ‘I think I’d prefer you didn’t remember me at all!’
He shrugged. ‘Sorry. It came to me later.’ He whistled for the dogs. They chose not to hear him and trotted off into the garden, disappearing into the fog. ‘Why don’t you wait a little. Come in and have a coffee. I’d never forgive myself if you had an accident in the lane on account of Mother’s Christmas puddings.’ He flashed his megawatt smile.
Daisy laughed in that carefree way of hers, as if she hadn’t noticed it. ‘I hope you enjoy them,’ she said, climbing into the car. Then she rolled down the window and waved. ‘Happy Christmas.’
Taran watched her drive away. He had been alone in the house all day, wishing he was in Toronto. It would have been nice to have had the company of someone his age. Christmas promised to be grim with his father’s enormous family, and he was counting the days until he could leave. Daisy would have been a welcome respite. He was a little put out that she hadn’t taken up his offer. He made a fine cup of coffee.
He didn’t remember her at school at all. He’d looked up his old class photograph in his parents’ album and spotted her immediately in the front row. Round-faced, smiley, plaits or pigtails. They’d been in the same class until he’d left at eight to go to boarding school. However, she had remembered him, he thought, cheering up.
He whistled for the dogs and, when they finally appeared, he went back inside. He couldn’t understand why she had declined his cup of coffee.
Chapter 6
Marigold kept the little notebook in her pocket and wrote everything down, even things she thought she would never forget, like where she’d hidden the Christmas presents. She noted every special order taken in the shop, Tasha’s requests for time off, Nan’s requests for biscuits, Dennis’s mid-morning cup of coffee, which she liked to bring him when he was working in his shed, and all the little demands Suze made without realizing she was being demanding. Daisy demanded nothing, but Marigold wrote down a mid-morning cup of coffee for her too, which she took into the sitting room, because she didn’t want her to feel overlooked. Her notebook was her lifeline in the fog that all too often drifted into her mind; the lifeline that no one knew she needed.
It felt good to be in control, to feel confident that she could hide her growing forgetfulness from her family with this very simple method. Every time she went to the loo she looked in her notebook, reassured that everything she needed to remember was in there. She hung a big calendar on the fridge in the kitchen